'Nicholas Shakespeare's biography of Chatwin sweeps aside years of speculation and hearsay and gives us as intimate a picture of this enigmatic author as we can ever hope to have...utterly compelling' Mail on Sunday
A biography of Bruce Chatwin, based on private notebooks, diaries, letters and hundreds of interviews. It illuminates the many sides of Chatwin, from Sotheby's director, archaeologist, "Sunday Times" journalist and traveller to devoted husband and active gay, socialite and loner.
Bruce Chatwin's death in 1989 brought a meteoric career to an abrupt end, since he burst onto the literary scene in 1977 with his first book, In Patagonia.
Chatwin himself was different things to different people: a journalist, a photographer, an art collector, a restless traveller and a bestselling author; he was also a married man, an active homosexual, a socialite who loved to mix with the rich and famous, and a single-minded loner who explored the limits of extreme solitude.
From unrestricted access to Chatwin's private notebooks, diaries and letters, Nicholas Shakespeare has compiled the definitive biography of one of the most charismatic and elusive literary figures of our time.
'A magnificent work of empathy and detection'
Colin Thubron, Sunday Times
'Utterly compelling'
Philip Marsden, Mail on Sunday
'A fascinating account of the man behind the myth'
Ian Thomson, Guardian
Of my contemporaries he had the most erudite and possibly the most brilliant mind -- Salman Rushdie
An epic piece of work of immense satisfaction... Awe-inspiring * The Times *
Comprehensively researched, elegantly written, perfectly balanced between the life, the books and the ideas * Independent on Sunday *
Quite simply, one of the most beautifully written, painstakingly researched and cleverly constructed biographies of this decade... Original, intelligent and observant * Literary Review *
A fascinating account of the man behind the myth * Guardian *
In Nicholas Shakespeare he has found, posthumously, the right biographer. This is a magnificent work of empathy and detection -- Colin Thubron * Sunday Times *
I take my scalp off to Nicholas Shakespeare. Biographies don’t come any better than this. Eight years in the writing, Bruce Chatwin is a glorious quilt-work of texts, voices and places, joined together with consummate judgement... Wisely Nicholas Shakespeare eschews detailed literary analysis. Such is his skill as a biographer, there is no need -- Justin Wintle * Financial Times *
It is so difficult to have any sense of another person’s inner life, but in this vastly enjoyable book Shakespeare successfully shines the torch onto a psychic landscape peopled by the fearful monsters that Chatwin kept mostly at bay by continually moving and reinventing himself -- Sara Wheeler * Independent *
Shakespeare must be praised for his energy, his always lucid presentation, and – above all – for his mostly poker-faced willingness to leave us as suspiciously intrigued by his strange subject as we were before -- Ian Hamilton * Sunday Times *
This is an authorised biography, but with none of the inhibition that an authorised biography usually entails. Nicholas Shakespeare has obviously done his research thoroughly – travelled in Chatwin’s footsteps, interviewed all his friends – and, although I am still not entirely convinced that Bruce Chatwin was the most fascinating man who ever lived, he proves quite fascinating enough to sustain these 550 pages -- Lynn Barber * Daily Telegraph *
- Short-listed for Whitbread Book Awards: Biography Category 1999
- Short-listed for Whitbread Prize (Biography) 1999
ISBN: 9780099289975
Dimensions: 197mm x 130mm x 40mm
Weight: 450g
656 pages